Tracy
by nikkilittle
Summary: Two minimum-wage workers in a pizza parlour find a second chance for love. There's a catch, however...
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1: "Prelude"

After 25 years of wondering, I had finally found her. Tracy was standing at the center of a high bridge over a river flowing through the western part of the town I had once worked in. It was an old-fashioned bridge with a rather narrow sidewalk on one side. The concrete railing came up maybe three-and-a-half-feet high. The masonry on the bridge was in bad shape and was crumbling. Tracy was leaning on the concrete railing and looking down over the edge. This made me nervous. She appeared not to have noticed me yet.

"I don't think I'd lean on that railing," I said. "It doesn't look trustworthy."

Tracy turned her head and looked at me registering no surprise at all. "Lewis, after all these years. You do recognize me, don't you?"

"Of course, you're Tracy. How could I forget? You're definitely the prettiest teen-aged girl that I have ever seen. I used to wish that you were a few years older."

Tracy smirked at me. "I knew that. I kept expecting you to ask me for a date, but you never did. You thought that I was too young for you. I was 17 and you were 28. There was also the difference in education. You had two college degrees which were proving to be pretty much useless, and I was a girl who would just barely graduate high school. I used to wonder if I was too dumb for you."

"You weren't dumb, Tracy. Education and intelligence are two entirely different things."

Tracy turned to face me. "Are you disappointed with what you see? I'm definitely not the hottie I used to be. Three kids did this to me. Every time I held up one of my panties, I couldn't believe how big it was. I got old and fat quick."

Tracy was quite short, maybe five feet one. Twenty-five years ago, she had been quite slim with narrow hips and a tiny backside. Her breasts had struck me as somewhat disproportionately large compared to the rest of her body. They were probably only C-cups, but she was so short and so tiny that they seemed huge. She was way too poor to have implants, so the high school boys used to whisper about her wearing "falsies."

One day her ride didn't arrive to pick her up, and I took her home. Her mother greeted me at the door, and it didn't take me long to figure out that Tracy and her mother were the only inhabitants of the home. She had no father. That sure explained some things. Tracy went into her bedroom to change out of her uniform leaving me sitting on an old, worn-out sofa with her bedraggled-looking mother. I had changed into street clothes in the restaurant's restroom. I hated to be seen in public in my uniform. Tracy's mother looked me over with interest, but kept quiet except to offer me a glass of water.

Tracy came out wearing a tight tank top and tight-fitting worn-out blue jeans. I realized that she was wearing those jeans mainly because she couldn't afford to go out and buy new ones. I wondered how much of Tracy's meager paycheck went to pay for necessities. The tight tank top with a plunging neckline made it abundantly clear that her breasts were real. I suddenly realized why she was so popular with the high school boys working in the restaurant, and why her breasts were the topic of so much speculation. Suddenly I felt a bit uncomfortable as I realized that Tracy might be showing off her "wares" to me. Tracy had a camera and wanted me to take photographs of her. I shot a roll of one dozen, and she took the film out of the camera and handed it to me. "Get two sets of prints and keep one for yourself. I want you to have something to remember me by." I still have the photos. I had also scanned them into my computer and had burned back-up disks to make sure that I never lost them. Every time I looked at them, I was astounded at how pretty her face was. All those freckles.

"Are you disappointed with what you see?" Tracy repeated. I snapped out of my reverie and stepped back to look her up and down. Now Tracy would be about 42. She looked 35. She had grown rather plump and matronly. Three kids will do that to even the skinniest young women. She was wearing an empire-waisted dress which showcased her breasts. They were big, round, and prominent with a lot of jiggle as she moved. Tracy was obviously still proud of her breasts. Her hips and backside were both full and rounded and had caught up with her chest. I suspect that didn't bother Tracy. She had a rounded, chubby belly that stuck out noticeably below her breasts. I'll bet that did bother Tracy. I guessed her weight at around 170. I thought she looked cute in the way that chubby women often do. She had nice curves. No denying that.

"You look just as good to me now as you did twenty-five years ago. I guess I'm just a sucker for a pretty face." I wasn't lying. The weight that she had gained had given her a heart-shaped baby face that was delicately framed by her medium-length reddish-blond hair. She had a butterfly mask of freckles across her nose and cheeks. Tracy had aged well. I saw no lines or wrinkles anywhere on her face. I started to think that getting plump may have been a blessing for Tracy.

Tracy looked at me in surprise. "You still think I'm beautiful, don't you? I'm fat and dumpy and you don't care!"

"I still think you're beautiful. Look in the mirror at your face. There's not a line anywhere. You're ageless." I was overjoyed to find her on that bridge.

"That's what I always liked about you! You always kept your eyes glued on my face while all the high school boys stared at my chest. So why don't you kiss me? I'm not married. Not anymore."

I hadn't noticed that strange moment when Tracy referred to herself in the past tense while talking about the size of her panties.

End of Chapter 1


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2: "Memories"

I was a prep cook in the restaurant that Tracy and I worked in, and I had to come in four hours before the doors opened for lunch. I usually left around two o'clock. Tracy was an after-school employee and came in usually around five. I had been working in the pizza parlour for several months without ever seeing her. I had heard stories, though.

Most of the stories centered around the question of the authenticity of her breasts. I had the image of Tracy as someone like the infamous Barbara of my junior high school days. Barbara had a fairly normal-looking figure except for her breasts. They were as big as footballs and stuck straight out. They looked like something out of the twilight zone. The first time I saw her in the seventh grade, she nearly knocked me over with them in an aisle in the school library. Barbara had a face like an iguana. I figured Tracy was Barbara with freckles.

I never saw Tracy until the summer of 1987 when she started coming in to work the lunch shift. I didn't recognize her when I saw her the first time and just assumed she was a new waitress until I saw her name tag. The tag was sitting on top of her left breast. This was the infamous Tracy? The blond with the enormous tits? She looked perfectly normal to me. She had the face of an angel. I was expecting an ugly girl with football-sized breasts. What a surprise!

"You're Tracy?" I stammered. "You sure aren't what I expected."

"You must be Lewis," Tracy answered without bothering to look at my nametag. "I've heard about you."

"Nothing horrible, I hope," I said. Tracy eyed me with obvious curiosity.

"Nope, nothing bad at all. You're one of two college grads working here as an hourly employee. I hope you escape from this place sometime soon. I'll probably be stuck working in places like this my whole life."

In spite of her sour comment, I soon saw Tracy as the live wire of the restaurant. Mischievous, carefree, and relentlessly cheerful in spite of her awareness of being trapped, Tracy was sort of like the restaurant's pet. Management loved her. She had more warnings in her personnel file than any of us, and the managers kept writing her up, but the unit manager refused to fire her even though she had triple the number of warnings that were supposed to trigger a termination.

I think the unit manager kept her around because she kept everybody amused. One day she was struggling with the lid of a canister of salad dressing and the lid suddenly popped free. Tracy was soaked in Italian salad dressing from head to foot. A waiter walked by and wryly observed that the salad dressing looked like semen and that Tracy just seemed to always have that effect on men.

Another day Tracy got drafted to crawl into the dishwasher and remove something that was clogging the drain. She was the only employee small enough to fit in the dishwasher. Tracy dutifully crawled in and removed the offending clog. She couldn't get out. The manager came back from his usual outpost in the dining room buried in paperwork. He wanted to know what the problem was.

"MY TITS ARE CAUGHT IN THE FUCKING RACK!"

It took awhile, but we did finally extract Tracy from the dishwasher. When she got loose, she pulled her uniform shirt down, and tucked the tail in. Suddenly the size of her breasts became obvious as she had pulled her uniform tight down over them. I made the mistake of staring.

Tracy looked at me with an amused expression on her face. "Well, well, Mr. Blind-As-A-Bat finally noticed. Yes, I do have big tits. However you certainly never had a chance to notice. You've had your eyes glued on my face since you first saw me." Tracy walked up to me very close and moved her face right in mine blocking my view of everything else.

"Am I that pretty?" Tracy asked.

"Yes, you are," I said. I didn't hesitate to reply.

"You're just about the only one who thinks so," said Tracy. "Everybody else just stares at my chest. You, however, are welcome to stare at my chest anytime you like." Tracy turned sideways a bit, threw her chest out, and winked at me.

When I think back to those days, I now see that Tracy liked me and was dropping hints left and right for a date. I never asked. She was 17. She was a minor. I was 28. I was an adult. She was carefree and mischievous. I was an intellectual worrywart. We were The Owl and the Pussycat. It was hopeless. I never asked Tracy for a date. I never dreamed that she would have accepted if I had asked. Now, looking backward, I am sure she would have. Tracy liked me. Maybe even loved me.

How could I have been so oblivious?

End of Chapter 2


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: "Mirage"

I stepped forward to kiss Tracy, something I'd never done before, and passed right through her. I stepped backward and could see right through her. Another two steps backward, and she became opaque.

"Most people have run screaming long before they get within six feet of me." Tracy, or whatever she was, looked at me with a curious mixture of pity and affection.

I stepped forward toward Tracy and she once again turned transparent. Another two steps and I passed through her. The love of my life was a mirage.

Tracy looked over the side of the bridge. "I jumped in 2010. I stupidly expected to die when I hit the water. Instead I was stunned when I hit. The current carried me downstream and stuck me under that giant tree that fell into the river. Look to your left. You can see it from here. I'm stuck in the branches underneath the tree just a few feet from the surface. Don't get any ideas about informing the police. I guarantee you that they'll slap handcuffs on you and charge you with murder. Just leave me down there. It doesn't matter anyway. I wanted to disappear."

"Why?"

"You'd be amazed at how fast a life can unravel. My mother kept nagging me to get married. She said I couldn't live with her forever. I couldn't earn enough to make a living for myself from restaurant jobs and didn't see any choice. I married a construction worker just to have a roof over my head. I was a trophy to impress his friends. I always used birth control except for when he raped me. That's right. My husband raped me. Sometimes he wouldn't give me time to apply spermicide and he'd throw the condom in my face. After three kids, he lost interest in sex. I was too fat, he said. Then he lost his job in the budget cuts of 2009. He was a local government employee. With three kids, I couldn't work and it was impossible to save money. It only took a couple of months for us to get evicted from our apartment. He packed up and disappeared with the car while I had the kids at a park within walking distance. My mother had sold her house and moved into a small four-room cottage. She didn't have room for three kids. One night in a homeless shelter and child protection services showed up and took my kids from me. They said I could have them back when I became a responsible adult who could provide them with a home. Ever try to cover all basic necessities from a minimum-wage paycheck?"

Tracy paused in her monologue. There was no pain at all in her voice. There was anger. Full-throated fury.

"After five weeks in a homeless shelter and getting insulted in job interview after job interview I just gave up. My last interviewer sat behind his desk, leaned back, clasped his hands behind his neck, stuck his nose up in the air, and asked me why he should hire a girl who barely graduated high school when he could get a college graduate for the same wage. This was for a minimum-wage job in a department store. I wondered why he bothered to call me in for an interview. Was he too lazy to look at my application before he scheduled interviews? Did the smug bastard just call me in so he could insult me? I had a sharp pair of scissors in my purse. I actually thought about jumping on the desk and stabbing that bastard in the neck with the scissors. I had walked to that interview. I didn't have a car. You know there's no bus system. It was a mile and a half. I had walked a mile and a half to get insulted. That's a long walk for a fat girl. I wish I had stabbed that bastard. I walked out of the interview. When I got to this bridge on the way to the shelter, I looked over the side. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I jumped over the side without any hesitation. I had had enough of life. I hated everything. I hated everyone. I hated this country. I couldn't take anymore. Most people regret their decision immediately after they jump. I didn't. I only regretted that I didn't kill that bastard in that last interview. I'd haunt that fucker if I could."

"I'm sorry you had to suffer through all that. This country has been awash in similar stories since the great crash in 2007. It's another Great Depression, but the politicians won't admit it. It's 2013 now if you're wondering, and nothing has changed. You didn't miss anything."

"Sorry about the kiss," said Tracy. "I'd kiss you if I could."

"Yeah, I'm kind of disappointed. I waited 25 years for that kiss."

"I should have married you. You would have had me if I had asked you, wouldn't you?"

"I would have fainted. I was oblivious. I never knew you were interested. I thought I was too old."

"The Owl and the Pussycat. The Professor and the Bobby-Soxer. We missed our chance, didn't we?"

End of Chapter 3


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4: "Fog"

"I've been stuck here ever since," said Tracy. "The only part of the world that I can see is this bridge all the way to both ends, and the river all the way in both directions. Everything else is enshrouded in a gray fog. A void that contains absolutely nothing except all sorts of sounds that seem to be coming from nowhere."

"Do you ever go into the gray fog?" I asked.

"I spend most of my time in the gray fog. The eerie sourceless sounds are annoying, but I've never seen anything in the fog. I sleep in the fog. I sleep a lot, actually. Not much else to do. I can always see the bridge. When I'm in the fog, it appears as a sort of brightly lit doorway. I probably spend two to three hours on the bridge every day. The rest of the time I'm in the fog. As you might expect, there are few few pedestrians on the bridge to disturb me. Cars pass by all the time. I'm sure the drivers see me, but they're so focused on the road or their cell phones that they never recognize me as anything other than a pedestrian. I scare the living hell out of the pedestrians who cross the bridge. I've had a few ghosthunters show up on the bridge with all their fancy equipment. Some of the ghosthunters see me and talk to me without ever realizing what they've just encountered."

"You haven't missed anything while you've been here. Sometimes I think the opportunity to be bored would be a blessing. All I do is work, sleep, eat, and bathe. I don't even own a TV. I don't have the time and the TV news just upsets me anyway. When I have a day off, there's nowhere left to go. I used to go birdwatching, but I quit that because the woods aren't safe anymore. Drug dealers. Crooks. There's also the risk of picking up Lyme Disease or West Nile Virus. I don't have health insurance and couldn't afford to use it even if I did have it. I used to go to chess clubs, but they all seem to have died out. The rise of playing chess on the internet seems to have killed them off. The internet seems to be replacing all the old social clubs. Nowadays people just sit in front of their computers instead of going out and seeing other people. I do have an internet connection in my apartment, but I use it less and less. My computer is a white iMac from 2006. A genuine antique by today's standards. Facebook is taking all the joy out of the internet. It's killing off everything else."

"You make the fog seem downright inviting. I thought life was a miserable constant chase after money just to pay for necessities. It still strikes me as downright bizarre to throw people out into the street over money. What good is a house or apartment if it's empty?"

"You're starting to sound like me, Tracy. Life makes no sense to me either. Tell you what. I'll come see you every Sunday morning. While everybody else is at church praising God, Guns, and the Republican Party, I'll spend my Sundays with you."

"Wouldn't you rather have a girl who's alive?"

"Girls don't date men who don't have middle-class jobs. Most of them don't anyway. Would you have married another cook in the pizza parlour? Or would you have held out for a more financially secure male?"

"I married a construction worker just to get a roof over my head. Look where it landed me. I don't think I've ever really known love. If I ever got a second chance, I sure would do some things differently."

"What things would you do differently?"

"I wouldn't marry for financial security. I wouldn't starve myself to stay thin, either. Did you know that I was starving myself in high school to stay thin? Best I ever looked in a dress was after two kids. It was that third kid that made me fat. Or maybe it was my husband taking out all his stresses and frustrations on me. After 2007 he got really mean. Even meaner than he had been. I would have left him if it weren't for having kids. Having kids was a mistake. His mistake. I didn't want any. All three of my pregnancies would have been called rape if he weren't my husband. Yeah, if I got a second chance, I definitely would not have any children. I'd get my tubes tied to make sure that I didn't have any."

"So that's three things. Anything else?"

Tracy looked thoughtful. After a minute or so, she finally spoke. "Yeah, one more thing. Eat more chocolate."

I couldn't help laughing. "See you Sunday, then."

End of Chapter 4


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5: "Keeping a Promise"

I kept my promise to Tracy. Every Sunday morning I would walk down to the bridge and find her waiting. As you might expect, my visits were the high point of every week for her. Sometimes I even forgot that she wasn't alive. We talked about just about everything you could imagine: philosopy, religion, political science, literature, poetry, history. Tracy's intelligence amazed me. She had barely graduated from high school, but her capacity for reason and reflection exceeded that of most well-educated individuals that I knew. We discussed just about everything but current events. We both knew that the country was in a state of slow-motion collapse. We knew that there was no way to stop that collapse.

Weeks became years and years became a decade. I never missed a Sunday even when I was ill. Time catches up to us all and my years of zero medical treatment for anything finally caught up with me. I had ignored periodic dizzy spells, and finally one of those dizzy spells was fatal. I have no idea what was wrong. I hadn't had a physical exam in at least two decades. It didn't matter.

I was dead, and yet somehow I existed. I walked, if you could call it that, down to the bridge for my last meeting with Tracy. She took one brief glance at me and knew.

"So now we go together. I've been waiting all these years for someone who loved me. My exit is the river. I've always known. Look down over the side. You can see the light. It's in the water. Eternity is in the water."

We jumped.

End of Chapter 5


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6: "Alternate Universe"

"MY TITS ARE CAUGHT IN THE FUCKING RACK!" Tracy bellowed.

I didn't wait for the manager to leave his post at his table in the dining room. I grabbed Tracy's legs and told her to push herself upwards against the rack. A little back-and-forth maneuvering and I had her free.

I couldn't help staring as Tracy stood up in front of me. This Tracy wasn't the slim waif that I remembered working with in the pizza parlour from so long ago. She was something halfway between the slim waif and the plump matron that I had encountered on the bridge. I walked up to her and pinched her rounded cheeks. She had the same cute, heart-shaped face that she had had on the bridge. She had the hips and backside, too. All that was missing was the rounded, bulging midsection. She was quite lovely. She was, in fact, perfect.

Tracy looked at me a bit confused, and I certainly knew why.

"Do you remember everything?" she asked. I nodded yes. I remembered everything.

Tracy stared at her left hand. There was a simple wedding ring with a small stone on her ring finger. I looked at my left hand. A gold band glistened on my left hand. Realization struck both of us at the precise same moment. I embraced Tracy for a kiss right there in the kitchen. I pulled her close and pushed her long, reddish-tinted blond hair back for the kiss. I breathed in the smell of a fresh-scrubbed girl who was wearing no perfume and no makeup. I felt her soft, full, rounded breasts squish against my chest. I had my left hand behind her neck and my right hand on her soft, well-fleshed hip. Her lips had the taste of a hint of strong, unsweetened, iced tea.

"This time we'll get it right," I whispered. "Whatever we do, we'll do it together."

The End


End file.
